The kitchen is the heart of my home. It’s the hub of the domestic wheel. Since it’s where the woodstove is, this time of year, it’s where everyone gathers. And, everything of any importance takes place there: meals get prepared, recipes shared, bills paid, horse grains mixed, tinctures made, messages exchanged; kombucha brewed, coffee sipped and books read. The kitchen is a … [Read more...]
If you’re not doing politics, you’re not doing enough. Review: Slow Democracy
"We live in an anti-political moment," wrote David Brooks last week in the New York Times, "when many people — young people especially — think politics is a low, nasty, corrupt and usually fruitless business. It’s much nobler to do community service or just avoid all that putrid noise." Brooks rightly suggests that seeing Steven Spielberg's new film Lincoln will show that … [Read more...]
Voluntary poverty — it could save your life, but what a hard sell
Poverty is finding middle class families these days these days through unemployment, bankruptcy and home foreclosure, whether they like it or not. And mostly, they don't like it. But John Michael Greer, author of this year's The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered and several previous books on surviving peak oil, suggests that those who haven't found poverty … [Read more...]